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Practices, Places, Projects

How can people connect through circular fashion, location and conviviality?

Practices, Places, Projects: A set of systemic design tools to enrol stakeholders toward a local and convivial narrative for Circular Fashion (2018)

This paper was presented at the Global Fashioon Conference (GFC) in London in October 2018. It challenges the territorial roots of circular fashion and contributes to the emerging field of ‘Designing for Conviviality’ - ways to create spaces and design tools for discussing how and where people are interacting, to avoid biological degradation, system obsolescence, radical monopolies, inequalities and frustrations.

Through an hybridization of research methods (interviews, field visits, participative observations), Marion Real designed the framework Practices, Places and Project as a set of four tools that can help design teams collaborating with stakeholders to be engaged with generating ideas about place. First, designers are invited to use an interactive visual mapping tool to note the evolution of processes and networks. Then, two design methods were created to encourage them to co-imagine the future spaces to incubate circular fashion concepts and design better connectivity with local community-based initiatives. Finally, they are invited to use a design tool for conviviality to assess their concepts in a more systemic way. This work outlines that systemic and textile designers can work together to activate change and develop more empowering solutions not only in the mainstream fashion ecosystem but also locally by co-developing circular places such as material libraries, open-source product databases and by creating a stronger proximity with people that will generate new bonds toward trust, making and convivial changes.

The project was based on an inter-disciplinary dialogue between material design and systemic design which took place during the Circular Design Speed project (Mistra Future Fashion programme) with the support of the London Doctoral Design Centre (LDOC). The paper can be found at: LINK

A close up of a worksheet with lots of coloured stickers